With a jolt of shattered bolts, the drop pod released itself from the descending shuttle, throwing the five men inside into instant freefall. "Oof!" Flynn grunted as he gripped the straps holding him to his section of wall.
"Steady," Skyler warned, eyeing the young man closely in the dim light. "It's supposed to feel this way."
"Yes, thank you," Flynn managed between clenched teeth. "I'm okay."
"First time's always the hardest," O'Hara said soothingly. "Just take it easy and breathe through your nose."
"I'm okay," Flynn repeated. "It just feels like—well, we are falling, aren't we?"
"That we are," Skyler confirmed, watching the softly glowing altitude gauge. Another thirty seconds, he estimated. "But not for much longer."
"After that it'll be time for fun with hang gliders and mountain air currents," Hawking put in.
"Just remember that without a chute slowdown we're going to be coming in a lot faster than usual when we pop," Skyler warned. "The gliders are designed to take the extra speed and stress, but be ready."
"I just hope Reger hasn't upgraded his security system since the last time we were there," Hawking muttered. "Dropping in on the man uninvited could prove hazardous to our health."
"I thought you said you and Jensen installed the system," O'Hara said blandly. "How does one upgrade from perfection?"
"Good point," Hawking said dryly.
Skyler looked over at Jensen. But the other was gazing straight ahead, apparently lost in his own thoughts.
A light on the altimeter flashed red. "Get ready," Skyler ordered, getting a grip on the release as he watched the gauge. "Five seconds ... three, two, one."
He squeezed the release; and with a violent jerk and an upward rush of icy air, the drop pod's floor disintegrated. The wall sections came apart at the seams, flinging the five men attached to them into the night sky.
For a few seconds Skyler clung tightly to his straps, watching the stars and the dark ground tumble crazily around each other. Then, with a snap of spring-loaded connectors, the wings of his hang glider extended themselves from both sides of his pod wall section. There were a few more seconds of vertigo, and then the glider leveled itself and he found himself hanging beneath the stars and his own gray canopy, swooping through the frigid air.
He took a deep breath, sternly ordering his stomach and inner ear to behave themselves as he looked around. He'd warned the others to expect a rough ride, but even he hadn't been quite prepared for just how rough it had been.
But he could see four other dark silhouettes blacking out the stars. Apparently, they'd all come through it all right. "Report," he said into the mike curving around the side of his cheek.
One by one, the others checked in. "Good," Skyler said when they were finished. "Everyone turn due east—"
"Skyler?" Flynn cut in. "I think I've got a problem."
"What kind?" Skyler asked, frowning again at the other silhouettes. One of them was definitely dipping beneath the others.
"I'm not getting much lift," Flynn said. "I seem to be crabbing to the right, too."
"I see you," Hawking said. "Looks like your glider didn't completely deploy."
Skyler swallowed a curse. Five klicks over mountainous terrain was not the place for an equipment malfunction. "Can you get to him?" he asked.
"I've got him," Jensen put in before Hawking could answer. "Hold as level as you can, Flynn."
"Trying."
Across the distance, Skyler saw one of the silhouettes make a tight curve and head back toward the sinking glider. "What are you going to do?" he asked.
"I'll start with the whack-it-with-a-hammer approach," Jensen said. "If that doesn't work, we'll have to try something else."
The two gliders had come together now, merging into one oversized shadow far below the others. Across the night breeze, Skyler heard a dull thud as Jensen slammed his nunchaku into the glider rib connectors. "Well?" O'Hara asked.
"Nothing," Jensen said. There was another thud, then two more in rapid succession. "Not looking good," he said grimly. "I guess it's papoose time. Flynn, I'm going to come over you and hook us together."
"You're not going to get much distance that way," O'Hara warned.
"He's right," Flynn said. "How about just letting me go down the way I am? I think I've got enough lift to land safely, just not enough to make it all the way to Reger's. The rest of you can go make contact, I'll hike to the nearest road, and you can send someone back to pick me up."
"No," Jensen said firmly. "One man alone in unfamiliar wilderness is a recipe for trouble. I'll link up, get you landed, and we'll hike it together."
"But—"
"Make that an order, Flynn," Skyler cut him off. "Jensen?"
"Give me a second."
The two shadows came together, and Skyler held his breath. "Okay, that's it," Jensen reported. "Gliders are linked. You three go on ahead and contact Phoenix. We'll find our own way to Reger's."
Skyler grimaced. Splitting up three-two wasn't a whole lot better than Flynn's suggested four-one. But Lathe had them on a tight schedule, and he couldn't afford for all five of them to go for a long hike in the woods. "You have maps with you?"
"We've got maps, rations, and fighting gear," Jensen said, starting to sound a little impatient. "We'll be fine. Get out of here, will you?"
"We'll have Reger send someone out to find you," Skyler promised, turning his glider back toward the east. Their second drop over Earth, and the second time something had gone wrong. What was it about this place? "Hawking, O'Hara—let's go."
The three silhouettes receded rapidly into the eastern sky until they had become part of the blackness of the night. Flynn watched them go, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. Even with Jensen along, this wasn't going to be fun.
It certainly wasn't the way things were supposed to have gone. Did all military missions have setbacks right out of the box this way?
"Flynn, are you turning south?"
Flynn snapped his attention back. They did seem to be making a lazy turn to the right. "No," he said, experimentally fiddling with his control bar. It seemed all right. "At least, not on purpose."
"Must be your broken wing," Jensen grunted, and Flynn winced as a series of jolts rippled through his glider. "Or else we've picked up a northerly crosscurrent."
Flynn peered off to the east, but the other three gliders were already lost to view. "Shouldn't we let Skyler know?"
"We're already out of range," Jensen said. "Besides, it's not like there's anything he can do about it."
Flynn grimaced. Terrific. "Ah, well," he said, trying to be philosophic about it. "They say long walks in the woods are very therapeutic."
"Yes, they do, don't they?" Jensen said, suddenly sounding thoughtful.
Flynn twisted his neck to look up, a complete waste of effort with the glider wing between him and Jensen. "Something?"
"It just occurred to me that, given we're heading south anyway, maybe we should see if we can get close enough to Aegis Mountain for a quick look."
"I thought there was a Ryqril base just outside the main entrance."
"There is," Jensen confirmed. "That's what I want to look at."
A sudden lump formed in Flynn's throat. "Oh. Uh ... you think that's a good idea?"
"What, you worried about a simple little Ryqril base?" Jensen scoffed. "And it is only a little one."
"Has it got autotarget antiaircraft lasers on its walls?"
"A couple."
"In that case, yes, I'm worried," Flynn said.
"It'll be a quick look, just to see if they've abandoned the idea of breaking into the mountain," Jensen soothed. "We'll pop our heads over the ridge, pop them back down again, then go straight back to the nearest road and head for Reger's. Okay?"
"Sure, why not?" Flynn said with a sigh. He looked up at the wing arching over his head. "It's not like I'm driving or anything."
"That's the spirit," Jensen said approvingly, turning them toward the southwest. "Settle in, and enjoy the ride."
The three blackcollars had lost a lot of altitude while they'd been circling around trying to fix Flynn's glider. Now, as Skyler watched the tops of the mountains passing them on both sides, he realized they weren't going to make it.
Hawking had clearly come to the same conclusion. "Looks like we're in for something of a hike ourselves," he commented.
"Walking's good for you," Skyler said encouragingly, trying to hide his own misgivings. The territory west of Reger's estate was extremely rugged, and the only roads through it might well be watched by Security agents and other unfriendlies. Nothing they couldn't handle, but it would cost them valuable time.
"Skyler, look about ten degrees right," O'Hara said suddenly. "There's a very dim light about a third of the way up the mountain that's blinking its little heart out."
Skyler frowned into the darkness. There it was, as dim and sputtery as O'Hara had said.
But it wasn't just blinking at random. It was blinking in Morse code. "Can anyone read that?" he asked. "It's going too fast for me."
"Yeah, I've got it," Hawking said slowly. "But it's not making any sense. Right hand—open, closed to fingertips, slide thumb—" With a snort, he broke off. "Oh, isn't that cute?"
"What's cute?" O'Hara demanded.
"Our friend there on the mountainside," Hawking said. "He can't know what kind of encrypt we might have with us, and even if he did we sure as hell can't do much in the way of serious decoding from hang gliders. And he can't just say, 'Welcome, blackcollars,' either, because he knows we'll suspect a trap and avoid him like the plague. So what does he do?"
Skyler frowned; and then it clicked. "He Morses us a description of a blackcollar hand signal."
"Oh, for—" O'Hara snorted. "Must be the altitude. Low oxygen flow to the brain."
"That, or senility is hitting all of us early," Skyler agreed, watching the light repeat its message. The hand signal their unknown contact was describing was the third-tier configuration for safe—come ahead. Security agents might have observed and documented any number of the first- and even second-tier hand signals over the years, but a third-tier signal was something only another blackcollar should know. "What say we wander over and take a look?"
The light turned out to be coming from the window of a small cabin built against a rocky cliff face. An area about twenty meters square directly in front of the cabin had been cleared of trees and brush, perhaps with hang glider landings in mind. Skyler dropped neatly into the center of the clearing, Hawking and O'Hara going for the more problematic but better concealed forested areas to either side.
Skyler had just popped free of his harness when a floodlight suddenly blazed from a corner of the cabin's roof, bathing the whole landing area in light.
Instantly, he leaped to the side, snatching a shuriken from his belt and sending it spinning toward the light. But even before it hit the light winked out again. "Welcome back, Skyler," a voice said from behind him.
Skyler turned around. Behind the purple blob bouncing in front of his eyes, he saw a slim figure emerge from the woods at the far end of the landing field. "Kanai?" he asked.
"Yes," Lonato Kanai confirmed, coming up to Skyler and bowing from the waist. "Do I take it from your arrival that something interesting is about to happen?"
"We certainly hope so," Skyler said, lifting his hand and giving an all-clear signal to the others. "How did you know we were coming?"
"I didn't," Kanai said. "But when an off-world shuttle is due in, I spend the night either here or at one of our other cabins, watching for supply shipments." He smiled faintly. "Or, even more hopefully, for blackcollar drop pods."
"Must be lonely duty," Skyler commented as Hawking and O'Hara came up from both sides. "You remember Dawis Hawking from our last pass through the area. Commando Kelly O'Hara; Commando Lonato Kanai. One of the leaders of the Phoenix resistance group."
Kanai's lip twitched. "Formerly one of its leaders," he said quietly. "No longer."
Skyler frowned. "Is there a problem with Phoenix?"
"Perhaps it's only a difference of opinion," Kanai said evasively. "But come—I have a car ready. Load your packs in the trunk and I'll take you to see Reger."
"Thank you," Skyler said. Manx Reger, one of Denver's most powerful crime bosses, hadn't been particularly pleased the last time the Plinry blackcollars had come through his territory, their presence threatening to upset the comfortable status quo that existed between the various crime bosses who effectively ran the region. Still, when they'd left he'd been cautiously interested in Anne Silcox's plans to rebuild a Resistance cell in the area.
Skyler could only hope the man was still feeling charitable toward unannounced guests.
Dragging himself out of a deep sleep, General Avral Poirot, head of Security for Denver, got to the phone on the third ring. "Poirot," he said, his voice croaking a little with dry throat.
"Bailey, sir," Colonel Pytor Bailey's voice answered. "I think we may finally have Manx Reger."
The last wisps of sleep vanished from Poirot's brain. "Explain."
"We had a drop pod breech in the mountains west of Boulder about half an hour ago," Bailey said. "Same general location where Reger usually gets his Resistance deliveries."
Poirot scowled into the darkness. Reger had been getting those deliveries at irregular intervals for nearly a year now, ever since Lathe's blackcollar team had come roaring into town and assassinated retired North American Prefect Ivas Trendor.
Why a man of Reger's wealth and comfort had gotten involved with the Resistance was still a mystery. But involved he was, and Poirot knew it.
But knowing and proving were two different things, even with the lax standards of evidence the Ryqril overlords permitted in cases like this. So far they'd never been able to catch Reger with the goods, or to find any other tangible evidence that he was involved. "How does this particular drop give him to us?"
"Because this one's chutes didn't open," Bailey said. "Which means that instead of being packed and ready to be thrown onto a truck, whatever it was should be scattered fairly randomly across the landscape."
Poirot smiled grimly as he swung his legs out of bed. And scattered merchandise could take quite a while to collect back together. If they hurried, they might make it to Reger's place before the goods did. "Do we have any spotters in the area?"
"I've scrambled two from Boulder," Bailey said. "They're still en route to the drop area."
"Keep them high," Poirot warned. "I don't want them scaring away the scavengers."
"Yes, sir," Bailey said.
"And then grab a couple of unmarked cars and a strike team," Poirot added, pulling his uniform off the bedside rack. "You and I are going to be sitting with Mr. Reger in his conversation room when the merchandise arrives."
"There it is," Lathe said, pointing out one of the shuttle cargo bay's small portholes at the dark mass coming rapidly up toward them from below. "Ever been to a frontline world in the Ryqril-Chryselli war, Caine?"
"No," Caine said, a shiver running through him. Growing up in Central Europe, though, he'd seen the kind of warfare the Ryqril could unleash when they wanted to. Lathe and the others, stationed on Plinry, had seen far more of it. "Any idea how badly it's been mauled?"
"Lepkowski didn't mention anything in particular," Lathe said. "I imagine we'll find out soon enough. Spadafora?"
"All set," Tardy Spadafora confirmed, straightening from his check of the large winch bolted to the deck at the shuttle's stern. "You sure this thing's going to work?"
"We've done it in reverse," Lathe reminded them. "How much harder can it be going the other direction?"
"Yeah, that's one way to look at it," Spadafora said dryly. "Sounds remarkably like those classic last words, 'Hey, everyone—watch this.'"
"You're welcome to ride the shuttle the rest of the way to the spaceport if you'd prefer," Lathe offered.
Spadafora wrinkled his nose. "No, that's okay."
Above the aft hatchway, an amber light blinked on. "Here we go," Lathe said. "Everyone into position."
Mordecai and Spadafora maneuvered themselves around the sides of the winch, pausing along the way to fasten the safety lines on their parachute-style harnesses to rings welded to the bay walls. Caine moved up behind Mordecai and did the same, feeling awkward and clumsy in his multiple layers of clothing. Beneath his long, light-absorbing civilian-cut coat he wore shirt and slacks, beneath which was his flexarmor. Above the coat, adding another twenty kilos to his weight, was a backpack with extra weapons, clothing, and emergency rations.
"Once more into the breech, as the poet said," Lathe commented, his eyes on Caine as he moved into position behind Spadafora. "You all right?"
"Of course," Caine said, his pounding heart belying the confident words. He'd done drop-pod insertions twice now, both of them more or less successfully. He might have even enjoyed doing it a third time.
Leave it to Lathe to suddenly change the rules on him.
"Get ready," Lathe said. The light turned red— "Go."
Mordecai slapped the release, and the shuttle bay was suddenly filled with a swirling windstorm as the drop door swung down into its usual ramp configuration. Caine grabbed his safety line, struggling for balance as his legs were nearly swept out from under him. The deck shuddered; and suddenly, out the open back, he saw the drop pods that had been fastened to the shuttle's outer hull go tumbling into the night behind them. "Drop pods away," Mordecai announced, peering out into the darkness. "Attitude and trajectory look good."
Lathe nodded. "Four minutes."
"Four minutes," Spadafora repeated, kneeling down beside the winch and unreeling a few meters of slender cable fastened to a large and very wicked-looking barb-nosed harpoon. Unfastening the harpoon from its harness, he carried it to a launcher attached to the floor just in front of the drop door and loaded it in.
Caine gazed out at the churning slipstream, counting down the seconds to himself as he visualized the drop pods' path. They would be popping their chutes about now, he knew, slowing their descent toward the ground below. Another minute, and their onboard timers would trigger their controlled destruction, blowing open the floors and breaking their walls into sections, each of which would sprout wings and turn itself into a self-leveling hang glider.
It would look exactly like the last two times he and the blackcollars had clandestinely landed on Ryqril-controlled worlds. Just like Skyler and his team should be doing on Earth at this very moment, in fact.
Only here on Khala there wouldn't be any infiltrators riding those hang gliders, just eight sensor-realistic dummies strapped beneath the wide, gray-black wings. Eight make-believe blackcollars, apparently intent on sneaking into Khala right under Security's collective nose.
And with luck, that would be where Security's collective nose would be pointing for the next half hour or so.
"Thirty seconds," Lathe called from beside the launcher.
Spadafora moved back into position on his side of the winch and got his secondary line in hand. Caine did the same, checking one last time to make sure his main safety cable wasn't near anything it could get caught or tangled on. Resettling his harness comfortably across his shoulders and thighs, he made sure his goggles and gas filter were securely in place. It was going to be like a hurricane when they hit the air out there.
"Here we go," Lathe said, flipping up a protective panel on the launcher and resting his gloved hand on the glowing red button beneath it. "Harpoon in five ... three, two, one."
He pressed the button; and with a burst of compressed air the harpoon blasted out the open hatch. It disappeared downward into the night, the slender attached cable from the winch reeling out madly behind it.
Caine felt his hand curl into a fist. Theoretically, Lathe had picked a landing area that would be clear of people or livestock or homes or anything else that would be instantly killed or destroyed by the harpoon's impact. But mistakes sometimes happened....
He had half expected the harpoon's impact to be transmitted along the cable into something he might feel. But he was still waiting when Lathe turned his head toward them. "It's down," he called. "Go."
And in a single smooth motion, Spadafora unhooked the safety line that fastened him to the shuttle wall, snapped the large carabiner ring of his secondary line around the unreeling cable, and leaped out into the night.
Lathe was right behind him, then Mordecai; and then it was Caine's turn. Setting his teeth firmly together, working the two cables as he'd practiced on the trip, he popped his first line from the wall, attached his second to the cable, and jumped.
For the first few dizzying seconds he actually slid upward with the momentum he'd been given by the shuttle's own forward motion. Then friction and air resistance and gravity dragged him to a halt, and a moment later he was sliding downward with increasing speed.
He gripped his line with one hand and waved the other against the air in an effort to keep himself facing the direction he was moving. The broken clouds overhead were blocking most of the starlight, but there was enough getting through to show the ground rushing up toward him.
He couldn't see the three blackcollars anywhere below him. Was that simply because of the light-absorbing coats they were all wearing? Or had their connection lines somehow failed, dropping them off the cable to their deaths? And if theirs had failed, wouldn't his likely do so as well? He took a deep breath, trying to stay calm.
And exhaled that breath in a huff as the ring above him suddenly seemed to catch, sending his feet swinging upward and his harness digging into his thighs as the deceleration dragged at him like a fighter-turn G-force. He caught a glimpse of figures on the ground beneath him, the urgently flashing purple marker lights at the rear of the harpoon—
And then, with welcome anticlimax, he slid to an almost gentle stop with his feet safely on the ground.
Lathe was already at his side. "Everyone clear," the comsquare ordered, grabbing Caine's upper arm in a steadying grip with one hand as he slashed a knife through the connecting line with the other. Spadafora, Caine saw, was standing beside the harpoon, his hand poised over an opened control cover. Half guiding, half dragging Caine a few steps away, Lathe gestured to Spadafora.
The other pressed the control; and with a sizzle of high-voltage current, the cable still unreeling from the distant shuttle evaporated in a puff of acerbic smoke.
"I guess you were right," Spadafora said. "It isn't any harder going down."
"What about the harpoon?" Caine asked, eyeing it dubiously. It had buried a good two-thirds of its length into the ground and didn't look like it was going to be coming out any time soon.
"We leave it," Lathe said, pulling off his goggles and battle-hood and stowing them in his coat pockets. "Besides, they'll figure it out anyway as soon as the hang gliders are down." He pointed south. "If we're on target, there should be a town about a klick down the hill."
"How big a town?" Caine asked.
"Big enough to have some cars lying around waiting to be borrowed," Lathe assured him.
"Plus a few public phones," Spadafora added.
"Right," Lathe agreed. "We'll want to contact Shaw as soon as possible, make sure he's ready to receive. I'll do that while you three find a car." He looked at his watch. "If we hurry, we should be in Inkosi City in a couple of hours."
"There they go," Khala Security Prefect Daov Haberdae said, nodding at the long-range telescope display. "Right on schedule."
"Yes," Galway murmured, frowning at the indistinct hang gliders as they sorted themselves out from the scattering wreckage of the shattered drop pods.
"Dae yae ha' ratchers on the gro'nd?" Taakh asked.
"We have watchers all over the area, Your Eminence," Haberdae assured him. "Whenever and wherever they come down, we'll have them covered."
"Excellent," Taakh said.
"I just hope Prefect Galway's right about them being of some use," Haberdae added under his breath. "I've got a lot of men and resources tied up in this."
With a supreme effort, Galway ignored him. Haberdae didn't like Galway's plan. He hadn't liked it right from the very beginning, and hadn't been at all shy about saying so. The fact that Taakh's support of the operation meant that neither Haberdae nor anyone else on Khala got a vote in the matter only made it worse.
And the Ryq hadn't been shy about making that clear, either. Nor, apparently, was he interested in starting now. "I ha' seen Lathe in action," Taakh said in response to Haberdae's quiet comment, taking a step closer to the prefect. "The 'lan rill rork."
Haberdae grimaced. "Yes, Your Eminence," he said, his voice neutral again. Loyalty-conditioning permitted a man to offer suggestions to a Ryqril, or in certain circumstances to even argue with them.
But no one argued with khassq-class warriors. Not if they wanted to stay alive.
"Looks like they're splitting into two groups, sir," one of the techs at the monitor panel spoke up.
"Yae ha' 'oth directions co'ered?"
"Everything is covered, Your Eminence," Haberdae said. His voice was properly respectful, but beneath it his patience was clearly strained. "From that altitude, they have a maximum range of maybe thirty kilometers. We've got fifty klicks covered, in every direction—"
"Something's wrong," Galway interrupted him, the back of his neck starting to tingle as he stared at the silhouettes of the hang gliders.
"There's nothing wrong," Haberdae growled. "My people have them covered."
"They're not there," Galway said, his vague apprehensions suddenly becoming certainty. "Those are decoys."
Haberdae turned to the control board. "Vaandar?" he demanded.
"Sensors clearly show a person hanging under each of those gliders," the tech assured him.
"The sensors are wrong," Galway insisted, swiveling to the communications section of his panel and keying a switch. "Because that's all they're doing—hanging. They're not controlling the gliders. Dispatch? Get me fifty men—"
"Hold it," Haberdae snapped, grabbing the armrest of Galway's chair and giving a yank that brought him rolling back from the board. "You already have all the men you're entitled to for this operation. You do not have authority to grab any more without my permission." He looked at Taakh. "Isn't that right, Your Eminence?" he added.
"The gliders aren't under control," Galway said, carefully pronouncing each word. "They're decoys. Lathe and the others got off somewhere else."
"Rhere?" Taakh demanded.
"Exactly," Haberdae seconded. "We've had the shuttle under surveillance the entire way."
"Except where it dipped into the Falkarie Mountain foothills," Galway reminded him. "There were a nearly two minutes where the sensors were blocked."
"And the ground observers had visual contact the whole time," Haberdae countered. "They would have seen any parachutes."
"Then they didn't use parachutes," Galway insisted. "Look, Prefect, I don't know how they did it. All I know is that they're not with those gliders."
"Ha' yae other e'idence?" Taakh asked.
Galway braced himself. "No evidence, Your Eminence. Just my experience with the way Lathe does things."
"Then 'Re'ect Ha'erdae is correct," the Ryq said. "Yae nay not rekest his other nen."
And there would be no appeal, Galway knew. Not with Taakh. "As you command, Your Eminence," he said. "In that case, may I be excused for a few minutes? The gliders won't land for at least another half hour, and I have some other matters to attend to."
Taakh inclined his head. "Yae nay go."
"Thank you," Galway said. Standing up, he headed for the door.
"Don't you touch my people," Haberdae warned.
"I wouldn't think of it," Galway assured him.
No, he wouldn't touch any of Haberdae's precious Security men, he thought grimly as the door sealed itself behind him. Not even the ones who were currently doing absolutely nothing except lounging around Inkosi City's main entry roads, as if Lathe would be foolish enough to enter a city along such obvious routes.
But then, Haberdae's Security men were hardly the only resources available. There was an entire government's worth of bureaucrats and tech workers scattered around the city, all of them loyalty-conditioned, none of them under Haberdae's legal jurisdiction. If Galway could get them out onto the streets and highways in the next half hour—all the streets, not just the obvious entry points—maybe they could spot the incoming blackcollars in time to get Judas and the special ops team in position to intercept them.
Picking up his pace, he hurried down the brightly lit corridor. With luck, maybe he could still pull this off.